The Prophets

I found this book extremely difficult. It has a heavy, deep, theme in its discussion about homosexuality within slave communities in the US. These are deep and difficult subjects, which the book delved into with a suitable degree of sensitivity. The relationship and abuse of the era is powerfully documented.

This is definitely and unashamedly literary fiction. There is a beautiful poetic prose which becomes somewhat overly verbose for me. The flowery language hides are rather skimpy plot with very little in the way of development. The premise is simple enough - one of the slaves is trying to ingratiate himself with the owners by becoming a preacher and exposing the gay relationship that the central characters have. The hypocrisy and distrust pile upon each other. It is an interesting study in how such communities can end up pursuing their own. This is all very slow burn and buried in a very wordy style. Not a lot happened for most of the book.

I am not a big literary fiction fan and ultimately the prose really turned me off. This was way to verbose for me. I can appreciate that for those who like this style this could be a good work, but I found it all a bit obtuse and densely written, with the story buried to deep in the text to be clear and ultimately engaging. The themes are powerful and sympathetically written, but the writing style just was not for me.